Don’t Let Joint Pain Be A Never-Ending Battle

Jordan Pysz / ifoundmydoctor.com
David underwent about “a dozen” unsuccessful knee procedures before going to QC Kinetix. He was impressed that the regenerative medicine treatments helped end win his yearslong battle with knee pain.

Though doing so is part of the unit’s charter, seeing action on the front lines of a combat zone is rare for a US military police battalion. Since its inception in 1940, the 504th Military Police Battalion has always been different.

The 504^thMilitary Police Battalion was engaged in more than a half-dozen campaigns during World War II, and it was the only American MP battalion in combat during the Vietnam War, when David Gageby was “lucky enough” to be part that unit.

David uses the word “lucky” sarcastically, of course. He describes the 21 months he spent fighting in Vietnam as the most difficult time of his life. He was part of a group commended for its work there, though, and for that he is quite proud.

“My unit received a (Meritorious Unit Commendation) for what we did, and we earned it,” he says. “I was out in the field or in the jungle pretty much five days a week during my two tours of duty in Vietnam.”

After leaving the military nearly 50 years ago, David found himself in a different battle, this one with debilitating knee pain. Now 73, he fought it throughout his working career as a general contractor and well into retirement.

“I first started to have knee problems when I was in my late 20s,” David confirms. “I have to admit that a lot of that is on me, because I was never one of those guys who just stood around and watched while everyone else did the work.

“If I was on a job site and my guys were down in a pit trying to get some foundation exposed or something like that and they were shorthanded, I’d jump right into that pit and go to work right alongside them. That’s just who and what I am.

“But I paid a price for it. As I said, my knees became an issue for me pretty early in life. For years, I just dealt with it as best I could, but later in life, they got so bad that it was all I could do just to get up out of a chair and walk because my knees hurt so dang bad.”

David says his knee pain persisted and worsened despite several attempts to alleviate it through steroid injections and arthroscopic surgical procedures. Then one day, a little more than a year ago, he heard an ad on the radio for QC Kinetix.

“I’d finally had enough of the knee pain,” David says. “I couldn’t get out of a chair without shooting pains running through my knees, and I needed to lean on a walker to get around. So, after hearing that ad, I said, I’m going to give this QC Kinetix a try.”

State-of-the-Art Treatment

QC Kinetix is a local practice with a national reputation that offers concierge-level, drug-free, nonsurgical pain management and state-of-the-art regenerative medicine treatments for soft tissue pain, joint pain and musculoskeletal conditions.

As an alternative to surgeries and addictive medications, QC Kinetix treatments trigger the body’s ability to restore itself from the inside out using each patient’s own healing properties, which are found in their blood.

That blood is gathered from the patient during a typical blood draw. It is then placed in a centrifuge, where the healing properties are separated and extracted. The healing properties help spark a tissue regeneration that allows the painful area to rebuild over the ensuing weeks.

“Regenerative medicine is a great alternative for many people who thought surgery was their only option,” says Daniel Sucherman, MD, the director of QC Kinetix‘s locations in Bradenton, St. Petersburg, Brandon and Lakeland.

After years as a key member of an orthopedic surgical team, Dr. Sucherman recognized the need for a better way to help people in pain. A strong believer in regenerative medicine and the positive impact it can have, he chose to meet that need through QC Kinetix.

“I’m an anesthesiologist, primarily for orthopedic surgery, and I know that people who go to an orthopedic surgeon for pain are commonly told they need surgery,” Dr. Sucherman explains.

“And believe me, surgery has its place. But surgery is very strenuous on the body. It involves a lot of cutting, a lot of drilling, sawing and hammering, and the recovery process is very arduous.

“In many cases, there is an alternative. That’s why I became involved with QC Kinetix. I want to offer people an alternative to surgery, pain medications and steroids for their joint pain. That is exactly what QC Kinetix and its regenerative medicine treatments do.”

Jordan Pysz / ifoundmydoctor.com
Thanks to regenerative medicine treatments from QC Kinetix, Barbara has resumed her active lifestyle and says she feels “20 years younger.”

Though it’s on the leading edge of medical science, regenerative medicine is not new. The most basic principles have been practiced for years.

At QC Kinetix, the process has been updated to provide better results.

For example, QC Kinetix uses state-of-the-art equipment that allows for the retrieval of the most beneficial healing factors from blood. In addition, it can also obtain components from young blood cells with extensive self-renewal properties.

QC Kinetix works with patients across multiple visits, providing drug-free treatments that are customized for each case. Symptom improvement is then monitored for several months while patients experience no downtime. Most patients complete their treatments within six months and experience ongoing benefits.

“Another feature that sets QC Kinetix apart from others is that we do all of this work in-house,” Dr. Sucherman points out. “Your blood and tissue never leave our office. And we do all this while you’re in the office. When we’re done, you simply go about your normal activities.”

Regenerative medicine treatments can be used to treat pain from arthritis and from muscle or tendon tears almost anywhere in the body, including knees and shoulders, ankles and wrists, hips, low back and neck.

“The ability to treat so many areas of the body is one of the biggest benefits of our program,” says Haley Weaver, PA-C, a certified physician’s assistant with QC Kinetix. “And we do that by mimicking the body’s natural healing mechanism.

“We’re not just putting a band-aid on something or temporarily suppressing inflammation. We’re sparking a natural healing process. To do that you need more than one blood product, so from each blood draw, we extract different components.

“Every time a patient is treated by us, more than one of those components is delivered to the area we’re treating because our goal is to keep supplying that tissue with the ability to restore itself naturally over time. Each treatment acts as a building block for the next.”

The staff at QC Kinetix also provides proliferation therapy, or prolotherapy, which is “a treatment of sugar water that agitates the tissue in the treatment area in a very controlled way,” Haley details.

“The agitation stimulates healing properties and tells the body to keep sending all those good healing properties to the area that’s been treated.”

Free From Pain

David says he was a bit skeptical ahead of his first appointment at QC Kinetix. He previously underwent about “a dozen” knee procedures, but none provided more than a few months of relief.

His mood quickly changed from the moment he walked into QC Kinetix.

“I was very impressed,” David relates. “I was impressed with the look and feel of the place and with the personnel there. And then I had my initial interview, and that gave me a lot of hope.”

David began receiving regenerative medicine treatments shortly after that meeting. At the time, he described himself as “running down a very sharp, rocky road as fast as you can barefoot.” He soon found himself feeling a lot more comfortable.

“I felt a difference after the very first treatment,” David enthuses. “I was like, OMG, I can’t believe this. This is a miracle. That was my honest reaction. I’ve received nine treatments since then. Thanks to those treatments, I am pretty much out of pain.

“I can stand up without falling over and without all that horrible stabbing pain running through my knees, and that is a massive improvement right there because I have stood up and fallen right back down again from the pain in the past.”

David still uses a walker to get around most of the time, but the QC Kinetix treatments have given him the freedom to move about without the walker if he chooses. For that, he is appreciative of the care he received.

“You go through life, and you learn to live with things, and that’s what I was doing,” he says. “But that was before I found out about QC Kinetix.

“Without them and the technology they’re using, we’d all be walking around with sticks in our hands to keep our balance.

“Thanks to QC Kinetix, I’m doing pretty darn good right now. I can sleep better. I can drive again, and I can even go to the grocery store and get around and do what I need to do without the struggles I used to deal with.”

Building From Scratch

Many children spend a part of their youth building forts and treehouses out of scrap materials around their homes and neighborhoods. Some carry that passion into adulthood and build a life around it.

Barbara Smoker certainly did.

While growing up on her grandparents’ farm, Barbara developed such a strong predilection for building things that she went on to become an architectural engineer and start her own general contracting company.

“My company built skyscrapers, schools, churches, apartment buildings – all kinds of things,” Barbara relates. “And we built them all over the place. I’ve lived in many places, sometimes for three months, sometimes for three years, whatever the job required.”

Barbara’s most recent move was to Florida, where this active, 76-year-old retiree enjoys fishing and “anything that has to do with the water.” A year ago, her ability to enjoy those pastimes was abruptly interrupted by an injury sustained in a fall.

“I was fixing something in the ceiling at home, and as I was coming down the ladder I tried stepping over a box that was at the foot of the ladder,” Barbara recalls. “I wound up stumbling and landing on my left side.”

The fall produced aggravating left hip and back pain, but it was her left shoulder that took the brunt. The damage to the ligaments and tendons in that joint was so great that it robbed her of almost all use of her left arm.

“At first, I could not move my left arm away from my abdomen,” Barbara laments. “It was so bad that, for a while, I had to live with a friend because I couldn’t do much of anything for myself. I was almost like an invalid, and I hated feeling that way.

“After a while, I regained some movement in my forearm, but the rest of my arm was still so sore and weak that I couldn’t do anything with it. For dinner, for example, I just had to get things that I could pop into the microwave. My shoulder hurt so bad that I couldn’t sleep at night.”

Keeping the Shoulder

Barbara sought medical attention almost immediately, but she was told the damage to her shoulder was beyond repair and that she needed a shoulder replacement. Unwilling to undergo surgery, she went in search of an alternative. She found one at QC Kinetix.

“The doctor I went to told me he could replace the joint, but that wasn’t what I wanted,” Barbara explains. “So, I did some research on the internet and found QC Kinetix. The more I read, the more I thought, This is something I need to look in to.”

During her initial meeting at QC Kinetix, Barbara was deemed a good candidate for regenerative medicine therapy. A few days later, she received the first treatment on her damaged shoulder.

“When I first went to QC Kinetix, I was in pretty bad shape,” Barbara says. “But now I feel great. Thanks to the treatments, I’m doing everything as if I was 20 years younger because that’s how good I feel. I feel as if I’m 20 years younger.

“I’m a very active person, and one of the things I love to do is help people. I like to help them with minor fixes around their house or help them with their gardening, and I can do all of that again now that I’ve received these regenerative medicine treatments.

“I’m very grateful for what QC Kinetix has done for me. The regenerative medicine treatments were a great success because surgery wasn’t an option for me. I needed to find something else to help me get my life back, and I found it at QC Kinetix.”